The problem with this book is that Jennifer Trynin is just as big a weasel as the businesspeople she writes about.<\/p>\n
The problem with the book business is it’s just as clueless as to what the public wants as the music business.\u00c2\u00a0 A book by a fortysomething never made it rock chick whose heyday was TEN YEARS AGO?\u00c2\u00a0 Yeah, that seems like a good investment.<\/p>\n
I wouldn’t be so incredulous if "Everything I’m Cracked Up To Be" wasn’t published by Harcourt, a "major" in the parlance of the record business.\u00c2\u00a0 I know, I know.\u00c2\u00a0 Some chick in editorial was a fan of "Cockamamie".\u00c2\u00a0 More likely, Jen’s writing instructor KNEW somebody at the house, and made an introduction, and a deal was forged.\u00c2\u00a0 There was a lawyer, and a contract, and an advance larger than the Arcade Fire got from Merge, but that’s what Ms. Trynin is good at.\u00c2\u00a0 Deal-making, not success.<\/p>\n
In case you missed the memo, Jen\/Jennifer Trynin was the object of a bidding war back in 1994.\u00c2\u00a0 Ultimately signed to Warner Brothers, her records flopped, and she floated back into obscurity, a never made it MUCH richer in the pocketbook.<\/p>\n
What did Harcourt think the market for this book was?\u00c2\u00a0 There’s not enough emotion for it to work if one isn’t music business-savvy, or at least not interested.\u00c2\u00a0 And the house did SUCH a poor job infiltrating the record ranks, it’s almost as if the book never came out.<\/p>\n
But you should read it.<\/p>\n
Because this book is real.\u00c2\u00a0 It shows how the business worked.\u00c2\u00a0 In the nineties.\u00c2\u00a0 Just before the fall.\u00c2\u00a0 Just before the labels took completely over.\u00c2\u00a0 Signing acts and making them over, hoping for that one big hit single that would result in raining coin and dropping quickly anyone who didn’t succeed with that paradigm.<\/p>\n
Hell, you’ve got to give Jennifer props.\u00c2\u00a0 She HUNG IN THERE!\u00c2\u00a0 When no one was interested she made an indie album.\u00c2\u00a0 Which caught fire.<\/p>\n
And then it was a feeding frenzy.\u00c2\u00a0 Oh you know how it works\/worked.\u00c2\u00a0 When you opened the pages of "Hits" to read "Wheels & Deals", back when people still read that magazine, when it still WAS a magazine.<\/p>\n
The herd mentality is utterly frightening.\u00c2\u00a0 The image of Donnie Ienner chasing this middle class Jewish suburbanite (and as Jen says in the book, I’m Jewish, so I can say this) making alternative music is utterly LAUGHABLE!\u00c2\u00a0 The man who helped make Mariah Carey cares about THIS?<\/p>\n
But you can’t count on Jen’s Grubman attorney to winnow the candidates properly.\u00c2\u00a0 He’s a whirling dervish not interested in his client, but just trying to run up the numbers so he can get a larger slice of the pie.<\/p>\n
And even David Geffen makes an appearance.\u00c2\u00a0 Wooing Jen.\u00c2\u00a0 It’s creepy.\u00c2\u00a0 For, even in 1994, he was already DAVID GEFFEN!\u00c2\u00a0 Isn’t this like Bill Gates calling your son who’s made a good YouTube video to come work at Microsoft?\u00c2\u00a0 Isn’t this OVERKILL?<\/p>\n
Oh, there are showcases.\u00c2\u00a0 And the obligatory first class trips to the coast, to interview managers and labels.<\/p>\n
And there’s ALMOST sex between Jen and her bandmate.\u00c2\u00a0 You almost wonder if it all happened, or if her editor told her to play it up.\u00c2\u00a0 Hell, a girl this determined in a committed relationship doesn’t give it up THIS EASILY!\u00c2\u00a0 And she didn’t.\u00c2\u00a0 He just got a few kisses.<\/p>\n
But really, you’ve got to catch the weasel behavior.\u00c2\u00a0 As the people who USED to run this business try to sign Jen.\u00c2\u00a0 Saying the most obsequious, cloying things.\u00c2\u00a0 Stuff that would make me spit out my beer, if I still drank beer.<\/p>\n
And then she signs with Warner Brothers.\u00c2\u00a0 Even though she says the label is in turmoil.\u00c2\u00a0 Didn’t her fucked up attorney tell her NO?\u00c2\u00a0 Oh, she was wowed by Danny Goldberg’s desire to make her the next Kurt Cobain.\u00c2\u00a0 The label had been through how many heads in how short a time, but she throws in with HIM?\u00c2\u00a0 Rather than someone like Eddie Rosenblatt, who’d been running Geffen from the INCEPTION??<\/p>\n
And rather than committing to Cliff and Peter she goes with a second rate manager who ultimately jumps ship to be number two at Donnie’s label?\u00c2\u00a0 Oh, you know who it is.\u00c2\u00a0 But JEN NEVER MENTIONS HIS NAME!<\/p>\n
Oh, this is what really pissed me off.\u00c2\u00a0 It’s like Jennifer Trynin wants BACK IN!\u00c2\u00a0 She doesn’t want to offend anybody who might help her in the future.\u00c2\u00a0 So, she only reveals the names of those who FUCKED HER!<\/p>\n
It’s obscene.\u00c2\u00a0 Dis Irving Azoff for being short, yet don’t even mention Jeff Gold’s name?\u00c2\u00a0 Even though Irving was just bidding on you, and you worked with Jeff day after day after day?<\/p>\n
The aforementioned Cliff Burnstein has the best scene in the book.\u00c2\u00a0 Wherein he essentially hangs up on Jen for being wishy-washy, not committing to Q Prime.\u00c2\u00a0 Jen mentions HIS name, because he pissed her off, did her wrong, but the manager who’s inept and ineffective and jumps ship in the middle she’s PROTECTING??<\/p>\n
Then again, that’s one of JEN’S best lines.\u00c2\u00a0 Whereupon hearing her manager’s going inside, she tells her attorney she wants some of her MONEY BACK!\u00c2\u00a0 A real lawyer, one not entangled in the web of the business, would have made the call for her, maybe even threatened to sue.\u00c2\u00a0 But not her Grubman guy.\u00c2\u00a0 Hell, that old manager is now at the MAJOR!<\/p>\n
Howard Thompson looks the best of the A&R people.\u00c2\u00a0 But she can’t even mention his name.\u00c2\u00a0 I ASSUME it’s him.\u00c2\u00a0 Hell, how many A&R people did Almo HAVE on the east coast?\u00c2\u00a0 Then again, she’s got plausible deniability.<\/p>\n
God, she couldn’t even mention the name of her HUSBAND!\u00c2\u00a0 Who was her PRODUCER!\u00c2\u00a0 Whose name you can read in the credits, which still live on, and probably will FOREVER, on the Web.<\/p>\n
So Jen pissed me off.\u00c2\u00a0 And the book pissed me off.\u00c2\u00a0 Because it was all build up and almost no denouement.\u00c2\u00a0 How about the wrenching train-wreck of realizing you’re not going to make it.\u00c2\u00a0 The heartache.\u00c2\u00a0 The PROCESS!\u00c2\u00a0 That’s given short-shrift, even though we go to endless audition gigs.<\/p>\n
This is a fucked up business.\u00c2\u00a0 If you want to know how fucked up, read "Everything I’m Cracked Up To Be’.\u00c2\u00a0 You’ll be hooked.<\/p>\n
Hell, I’ll help Jen out, I’ll hype her book.\u00c2\u00a0 It’s a good read.\u00c2\u00a0 But after finishing it, I got the sneaking sensation Jen has a NEED to be famous.\u00c2\u00a0 And maybe that’s why she never made it.\u00c2\u00a0 Because just like her writing, her musical talent was GOOD, but not GOOD ENOUGH!\u00c2\u00a0 It was her sheer will that got her to the starting line.\u00c2\u00a0 But she could never make it to number one.\u00c2\u00a0 Maybe because her nemesis, Alanis Morissette, put it all on the line, and Jen is too cerebral, pulling punches, not delivering the essence.\u00c2\u00a0 I mean if you can’t name names, what makes you any different from the junior high school GOSSIP?<\/p>\n
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The problem with this book is that Jennifer Trynin is just as big a weasel as the businesspeople she writes about. The problem with the book business is it’s just as clueless as to what the public wants as the music business.\u00c2\u00a0 A book by a fortysomething never made it rock chick whose heyday was […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-492","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-music-business"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p96vPs-7W","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/492","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=492"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/492\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=492"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=492"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=492"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}